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The Writer: Chapter 3https://story-a-week.com/2018/10/07/the-writer-chapter-3/
https://story-a-week.com/2018/10/07/the-writer-chapter-3/#respondSun, 07 Oct 2018 18:23:51 +0000http://story-a-week.com/?p=140I appreciate you coming here, I really do, but you’ve got to stop looking at me like that. You remind me of my shrink. She kept staring at me in such a way, as if I were going to strangle myself with my necktie.

Have you ever heard of Sisyphus? No, it’s not a venereal disease. He was an ancient king. Nasty bastard. He enjoyed killing people. He was deceitful and his greed for power and money was insatiable. Eventually, the gods punished him by making him roll a boulder up a hill, but before he could reach the top, the boulder would always roll back down, so he would never complete his task.

Like Prometheus, who was punished by having his liver eaten by an eagle every day only for it to grow back and be eaten again the next day.

If you thought you were smarter than Zeus, he would punish you in a way you’d never forget.

Sadly, they don’t make gods like they used to. Our modern god seems to go through something we would call a midlife crisis. He wears a white suit. He may or may not wear an expensive watch. He may even drive a Ferrari, for all we know. But he’s no longer interested in punishing us. He doesn’t love us but doesn’t hate us either. He just doesn’t care.

We need to pay for our sins. God has to smite us. We need to bow down on our knees and beg for mercy. We need to cry for some god that never loved us and probably never wanted us anyway to forgive us. We need to suffer, and we need to suffer right away.

Every night I would bow down on my knees and pray. Looking at the starless sky through the window, I would cry and pray as if he could really hear me. I just wanted someone to hear me. I just wanted to be punished.

Every day I would go to a church and confess my sins to a priest. Every day a new church, a new priest, a new religion, and new sins. Sins I had never committed. I made them up, every day more and more gruesome and more terrible.

“Father, I killed a man because he was so ugly that it felt like an insult. No, father, I’m not making fun of you. I killed him because I felt that someone had to. No, father, I’m neither joking nor am I mad.”

“Rabbi, don’t you feel sometimes that you would like to kill someone just because you’re bored? That’s why I stabbed him the eye with a toothpick and watched him bleed to death on the floor.”

I kept waiting and waiting for some feedback from god. I guess I should have emailed him a list of sins I wanted to be punished for. Not mine, but everyone else’s.

I expected for something to happen, something terrible, like an airplane engine crashing down on my bed from Heaven while I slept my pathetic, dreamless slumber. But, no. Nothing happened. He just didn’t care. I began to hate him, and as months passed, I began to forget him.

Some say that in this life, we don’t pay for our sins. All the pain, all the suffering, is a way of paying for the sins the ones before us committed. That meant that my ancestors had been freaking saints?

Every day felt the same. Every day resembled the one before in excruciating detail. Every day, nothing happened. I contemplated committing suicide. I would imagine how it would be to step in front of a passing car, how it would be to have my body hit by two tons of pure power. I wanted to take a bottle of pills, go to sleep, and never wake up. But you see, those who always think about ending their lives never have the courage to actually do it. They’re not living, but are not really dead either. They become lonesome figures, empty shadows, plastic mannequins in a dress shop.

I kept asking myself if my soul could feel any pain that would be inflicted upon my body, because, you see, pain is the only thing that’s real in this world. So when I was all alone, I would use a needle to tear a hole in my arm. Just so I could feel something. After a while I grew used to the pain, so I began to use a knife. I would use it to carve into my flesh. I made tens of little scars, of artificial wrinkles.

Me destroying God’s ultimate creation.

That’s when I stopped wearing T-shirts.

And then, when I had lost all hope of redemption or punishment, when I thought that nobody could save me anymore, something happened.

Octavio Paz once said that solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Sometimes I think this is how Hell is supposed to be. A dark, empty room. Or a huge city with no one but yourself for company.

I know that you’re here just because you want to find out what really happened to Oscar, but I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you. I am going to read you one of my stories instead.

Why? Because every writer wants to be read, every storyteller wants to be heard.

Crossroads

“El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.”

Francisco Goya

His chest felt heavy, his legs tired. Dead leaves rustled under his feet. Nailed to the sky, the moon’s sardonic smile quivered among a cluster of cold stars. His body just a coffin for his soul, Robert seemed to take every footstep with infinite precaution, as if fearing that the dirt road would swallow his feet.

On each side, pine trees stood tall. Ancient guardians.

“Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of-” he tried to recite, but was interrupted by hounds barking somewhere in the distance. Long, reverberating shivers of sounds that seemed to had spawned from hell itself bashed against his ears. His black skin glistened with sweat; droplets shuddered down from his hairline to his eyebrows, down his temples. The skin of his neck burned, hot. His eyes glimmered in the dark void, hopelessly trying to peer through that endless ocean of fear and agony. He pressed the guitar to his chest, his long arms forming a desperate embrace around the black wood. The sharp smell of lacquer flooded his nose.

Robert was so young. He would have liked to believe that all this was just the terrible lethargy of a nightmare, but it wasn’t because he could smell the fresh and clean scent the trees around him emanated.

When he reached the spot where the road that led to Dockery Plantation and the one that led to Clarksdale met, he sighed. A small lamp hung from a wooden street sign, and a bench overlooked both roads. He turned around – a sinuous and dark pathway slowly dissolved into the night.

He stood there for a long time. Then he began to stagger his way toward the bench.

With his guitar resting in his lap, he took a deep breath, the cool air making its way down his throat with a prolonged hiss, and then he began to sing a lullaby, his hands drumming on the guitar. Above, a comet was cutting through the black sky like a knife, its bluish tail shining bright.

His singing was cut short by hounds barking. He gulped. His heart throbbing inside his chest, he rummaged through his mind for a bit of clarity, for a bit of strength, but couldn’t find any. It was as if someone was walking toward him, a vague perception hinted by the shadows that danced on the ground around him. His body froze as he could now clearly hear footsteps, growing stronger and stronger. A gust of wind rattled all the ghosts that resided inside his soul. Twigs fluttered spasmodically and screeched as if possessed by a demon.

“Where are the others?” A deep voice killed the silence and shattered into a million pieces inside his head. Robert closed his eyes. His shoulders shuddered. This was all just a dream.

When he opened them, he saw a puny man sitting beside him on the bench. The man’s eyes were a strange grey, a color he had seen many times before in his nightmare. He wore a black trench coat that came all the way down to his knees.

“Where are the others?” the man repeated, staring intensely back at Robert.

“What others?”

A frown flickered across the man’s pale face. “Others. Like you. There should have been more tonight.”

Robert rubbed the sweat off his eyebrows and forehead.

The man leaned forward and fixed his gaze on Robert’s eyes. Deep wrinkles traversed his forehead. He caressed his chin with his tiny fingers.

“Can you see my soul?” Words struggled to come out of Robert’s mouth.

The man didn’t bother to answer. He pointed toward the guitar. “This is what you want?”

Robert nodded.

The man took the guitar from his shaking hands and placed it on his lap. A lifetime of agony passed between two heartbeats. The man tuned the guitar with care, and then he began to play. His hands were performing such an intricate choreography, making the chords cry underneath his small, white as bone fingers that a tear formed in the corner of Robert’s eye and lingered there for a moment.

As the painful melody sent ripples through the night, the man stared hollowly at the dirt road that stretched toward Clarksdale. A long time passed, with Robert hopelessly rubbing life back into his arms and shoulders.

Then the song stopped. The man glanced at Robert with his ash colored eyes and smiled.

“Thank you,” Robert whispered as the man handed him the guitar back. “How’s this going to…” he muttered, his fingers caressing the chords. A sharp pain pierced through his fingers and travelled upward through every fiber of his body. His soul fell into a deep abyss, and his heart began to boil inside his chest. He felt that he couldn’t breathe, that air couldn’t make its way down to his lungs. He closed his eyes and began to play vividly, his hands shaking in despair. Soon the fire in his body and limps dissolved, and he opened his eyes, his eyes as black as tar – they were void of any light. Empty and cold.

The other man stood on the street a few feet away from him, with his hands tucked in his pockets. “What’s your name?” he asked and grinned, revealing yellow, crooked teeth. His grey eyes shone bright.

A faint breeze quivered around their bodies. The two dirt roads that collided underneath their feet glowed in the shy light of the lamp. A weak heartbeat tried to keep an empty body alive.

And the black man said, “Robert, sir. Robert Johnson.”

]]>https://story-a-week.com/2018/09/30/the-writer-chapter-2/feed/0mihaicristiandanielThe Writer: Chapter 1https://story-a-week.com/2018/09/23/the-writer-chapter-1/
https://story-a-week.com/2018/09/23/the-writer-chapter-1/#commentsSun, 23 Sep 2018 07:57:38 +0000http://story-a-week.com/?p=133The only thing that is worth remembering, and worth remembering over and over again, is that in this world, under all and any circumstance, nothing ever happens.

My name is Jonathan Fisher and I can stare at the sun longer than anyone else on this planet. Longer than you. And I am afraid you are not going to like me.

Most of the time I’m just a ghost, a shadow riding in the back seat of a bus, a whisper travelling across a Universe only ten miles wide. So it shouldn’t surprise you that the first event I can recall with an almost morbid precision took place on my twenty third birthday. That was the day we buried my father.

And still, as the hole in the ground swallowed his casket, I couldn’t feel anything. Because nothing had happened to me before, nothing had left a mark upon my soul. And in the moments of my first sorrow I understood that the worst fate is to be no one.

Shadows quivered around the cemetery as the sun hid behind a murky shroud of clouds. Only a timid web of light remained, engraved on the surface of that endless sea of darkness.

A hundred eyes hoped to catch a glimpse of agony and pain on my face. Time seemed to stretch like a rubber band, and all I could do was wait for the rubber to rip.

I felt numb, blind, and deaf while I was hopelessly trying to find the meaning of something so elusive, something that seemed to be hiding in the deepest crevasse of my mind. I was running after a thought that seemed to be so clear and simple…

And then, just as I was beginning to lose hope, I found what I so desperately needed. The realization that words couldn’t explain the death of someone I almost knew, someone I almost loved.

My victory was short lived because my vision still couldn’t prevail through the stillness that insulated my soul, which had built an unbreakable wall between me and the rest of the world.

They were all looking at me as if I were some kind of freak, but that provided me with a little bit of comfort.

All great men are misfits, yet I couldn’t help but wonder what was worse: to be like everyone else or to be entirely different. I could only think about the fact that I needed a tragedy in my life, just so I could feel alive, just so my heart wouldn’t stop beating.

Life goes on. No matter what, life goes on.

Did that make me a villain? I wasn’t sure. No matter how many books you read, you’ll never be prepared to face the villains that inhabit your own little story. Your life’s story.

The truth is that we’re all strong enough to endure someone else’s tragedy.

They thought I was a bastard because I couldn’t cry. My mother was sobbing beside me, and I just stood there, with my hands tucked deep inside my pockets, staring blindly at a slowly fading abyss, staring down at the blandest possible ending to a story.

We are born and then we die. And in between lies only this strange darkness that we can’t break. That’s, probably, the only certainty we have in life.

After the ceremony was over, everyone left me there. They all abandoned the son who couldn’t weep for his father. So I had to walk back home.

I think I should say something cheesy, like that was the longest, hardest walk in my life. But it wasn’t. It was just cold and dark outside. Street lamps were struggling to fight off the night, grasshoppers were singing their pathetic lullaby, and the smell of summer flowers echoed throughout the old town.

On my way home I stopped at a supermarket and bought a can of soda. I drank half of it and the other half I spilled on the pavement.

When I got home, I unlocked and opened the door trying to be as silent as possible. I didn’t want to wake up my mother. I didn’t even turn the lights on. I always tried to be such a good son.

As I staggered my way down the hallway, my feet tripped over something. I couldn’t see what it was, so I turned the lights on. My father’s black leather shoes. Size six. He had such small feet. I smiled at the thought that he had bought those shoes with me. Small tears, proof of their considerable age, ran across their lacquered surface. Dried mud stained the tip of the right shoe. My father used to walk in such a strange way.

I realized what had happened. And I cried.

The Writer will be published on this website on a weekly basis. One chapter every Sunday.

If you do not have the patience to wait that long to read the entire novel, you can find it on Amazon.com here.

]]>https://story-a-week.com/2018/09/23/the-writer-chapter-1/feed/2mihaicristiandanielThe Writer: Prologuehttps://story-a-week.com/2018/09/16/the-writer-prologue/
https://story-a-week.com/2018/09/16/the-writer-prologue/#commentsSun, 16 Sep 2018 14:48:13 +0000http://story-a-week.com/?p=130There’s this neat trick they do in television, especially in hour long TV dramas. It’s called a teaser and its sole purpose is to make you want more. It usually ends with a cliffhanger just so you don’t change the channel when that lengthy commercial break starts.

Sometimes the teaser is a glimpse of a scene close to the end of that episode. This is how I’m going to begin my story – with a short scene close to the end.

I guess the first thing you should know is where this scene is taking place.

Imagine a centuries old oak forest, one that would creep most people out. Huge trees, rotten carcasses, contorted ghosts. Boughs, now useless limbs, lying on the ground.

The second thing you should know is “when.”

Henry James thought “summer afternoon” to be the two most beautiful words in the English language. So let’s say that’s our “when.”

Summer afternoon. I bet you’re thinking about sunlight slipping through thousands of leaves, twigs greedily stretching skyward. But maybe it’s cloudy, maybe fog curls around leaves and branches, a trembling embrace. The forest has its own sounds that appear to be most sinister.

Your lungs gasping for air, you’re drowning in that sea of ash-colored fog. You can’t tell what is what, you fill every shadow with doubt.

After all, you can only see what you’ve been taught to see. In this case, a labyrinth with no way out. It doesn’t take much for your reason to become a mere echo inside your head.

But just for the sake of that paradise I painted inside your mind with only two words, just for that sake, let’s say that it is indeed a sunny summer afternoon. Green leaves flutter in the warm breeze. The forest is filled with the rich odor of flowers.

Well, last but not least, you should know who the characters are and what they are doing. The only character worth mentioning is a guy named Oscar. And he’s lying on the grass, with his hands folded over his stomach. Blood is dripping on the ground, his white shirt is slowly turning red, the spot around his hands expanding every second. His face is a web of contracted muscles.

Me, I’m on my knees, digging a hole with my bare hands. What’d you expect me to do? I only met the guy three days earlier. My body is there, I can feel the mud underneath my fingernails, the warm sun caressing my face, death poisoning the air around me. But my mind, well, my mind is someplace else. The half that’s supposed to care, the half that’s supposed to wave hands like a maniac, you know, that half that’s supposed to try to stop the bleeding or offer some comfort. Well, that half’s just missing.

“I’m dying!” he says, his left arm tearing tiny blades of grass around his inert body, his voice a mere murmuring shadow of life.

“No, you’re not.” I stop digging and look at him with as much compassion as a soulless person is capable of mustering.

The funny thing is that he’s a doctor, so he must know these sorts of things. And, well, I guess most people are capable of understanding that they’re going to die, but they just can’t accept it. Fate is always too cruel. We’re always so stubborn.

I put my hand on his burning forehead. He rolls over and crouches, his knees touching his chest. His bloody fingers balled into fists, his entire body arched and shaking. Blood still gushing through the hole in his shirt.

It’s such a beautiful day. The perfect day to die.

I turn him over on his back and take a look into his eyes. They feel empty, cold. His soul should be exiting his body just about now. His mind is telling his soul, “Please, vacate the premises.” When blood starts dripping from his mouth, making its way down his cheeks, that’s when I freak out. I take a few steps back.

“Goddamit!” A long shriek reverberates around his soon to be dead body.

It’s the sunniest, hottest day ever and I can swear I see his cold, smoky breath hovering over his head, lingering in the blinding light like an aura. Then, suddenly, it disappears.

After all, you can only see what you expect to see.

All I can think about is that this is not how this story is supposed to end.

When he stops blinking, when his chest stops moving, and his purple lips stop quivering, that’s when I realize he’s dead. This time he’s really, really dead.

Do you want to know how this feels? How I feel?

Have you ever shoved your hand inside a burrow? Inside one of those holes in the ground, covered by darkness even during the day? Just stretch your arm inside the void and close your eyes. Squeeze nothing in your hand as you make your way deeper and deeper. You don’t know what to expect.

We never know what’s going to happen.

But what could happen? What’s making the hair on your back stand up, what’s making your heart beat as fast as the wings of a hummingbird? After all, there are only about six hundred species of venomous snakes on the planet. And a lot more things with claws and fangs. But what’s really that terrifying that you can’t even breathe? Is it that disgusting not knowing what’s going to happen?

Suddenly, I start running through the battered trees, my legs trying to keep up with my desire to get as far away from Oscar’s dead body as possible. But, as anyone who has ever tried it can tell you, you can’t run away from a nightmare. I stop and try to catch my breath. My chest feels so heavy. This burning pain is piercing my stomach. There’s so much adrenaline flooding my veins. I can hear police sirens and people shouting, “Oscar, Oscar.”

I’m too tired and too scared to run away from them, so I close my eyes. The forest sends whispers of joy to my ears. I accept the warm embrace of the sun, my feet sink in the black soil, my lungs inhale the fresh, clean air.

All so quiet. All so still.

And then I open my eyes and see Oscar standing in front of me, his right hand covering the gunshot wound, dried blood painting his knuckles, and a dead man’s smile cutting through his face. He doesn’t look so good. Wretched creature…

I guess that what doesn’t kill you only makes you wish it did.

The Writer will be published on this website on a weekly basis. One chapter every Sunday.

If you do not have the patience to wait that long to read the entire novel, you can find it on Amazon.com here.

“There’s an ancient saying in Japan, that life is like walking from one side of infinite darkness to another, on a bridge of dreams. They say that we’re all crossing the bridge of dreams together. That there’s nothing more than that. Just us, on the bridge of dreams.” – M.T. Anderson

Some nights I can’t fall asleep. So I drive around, stare at people on the sidewalks. Closed shops. Beggars. Thieves. Whores. Nighthawks. The damned and beautiful. When I do fall asleep, I always dream about her. Each and every night. We talk. We just talk. I tell her everything I never had the chance to tell her. She listens. I ask her all the questions that I need answered in order to let her go, but then I wake up. She smiles and the dream drops dead, dissipating in the shivering morning.

I miss her. A lot more than I ever loved her. A lot more than I ever thought possible. I think about her every day, I dream about her every night. The moment I open my eyes in the morning, for a second it feels as if she’s lying there beside me. For a second. Then I know she’s not. She’s gone. Forever.

They say it takes some time. To get over. To forget. To move on with your live. To replace. To realize that life is just the same without her.

They’re wrong. Life will never be the same. It never is. Only those who never truly loved can replace. Can forget. The rest of us? We spend whatever is left of our lives aimlessly wandering between love and hate. Between blaming ourselves or them. Between wanting to forget them and wanting to find them again.

It’s a terrible thing to go through. It’s out of your control, out of your reach.

I met her when I was twenty three years old. Just a kid. Whatever it was I thought about love, well… she changed all that.

[…]

Some mornings I don’t want to wake up. I just want to stay in bed, talking to her in my dream. Telling her all that I need to tell her, all that I want to tell her. I know it’s just a dream, but couldn’t it last until I get to see her again? I know it’s not real, but what is?

It’s just me and her. On a bridge of dreams. The rest is darkness. Infinite and cruel.

]]>https://story-a-week.com/2018/05/25/mornings-with-her/feed/5mihaicristiandanielSaudadehttps://story-a-week.com/2018/05/20/saudade/
https://story-a-week.com/2018/05/20/saudade/#commentsSun, 20 May 2018 14:55:29 +0000http://story-a-week.com/?p=115All you can picture inside your head, over and over again, is you closing the door behind you. It felt… irremediable. Your own version of passing the Rubicon. That was the moment when the nostalgia of all that could no longer be began.

It is said that when two people break up, one feels relieved, free. It is over. It is time to move on. And the other one is left with the broken pieces of their heart, not knowing what to do.

Saudade. The love that remains, the love that no amount of poison could ever kill. The love that will eventually alter itself to become what is left when nothing can be done anymore.

It was beautiful…

But you closed the door behind you and he didn’t try to stop you. He let you go. He is free now, and you are a prisoner.

You think about him kissing another, making love to another, and it makes you want to eat your own heart out. This is poison. It doesn’t diminish the feelings you have for him. It amplifies them.

Strange creatures that we are. We only realize what we had when it’s lost to us forever.

He is lost.

The man you fell in love with, if he even existed in the first place, got lost along the way. He is someone else now. Someone you don’t recognize anymore.

When you felt that tear linger in his eyes… when you saw it slowly trickling down his cheek… you thought he’d tell you to stay. Part of you wanted him to tell you to stay. Part of you wanted to just walk away and move on.

You stared at that door for a moment or two, wondering if he was on the other side, missing you, just as you were already missing him.

You thought about all the words you wanted him to say. You thought about everything you never had the courage to tell him. You thought about courage. And love. And hate. And all that was lost and would never be returned to you. You thought about pain, about sadness, about all the nuances contained by our vast range of human emotions.

But it was too late.

And all you could do was miss one another, the ones you used to be when you were everything each other wanted.

Johnny Cash was once asked for his definition of paradise. He used six simple words to answer what often proves to be a difficult question to most people.

“This morning, with her, having coffee.”

Who is her? I have often asked myself. Where does one find her? How? When?

Of course, I have found her. And lost her. And found her again. And again. And every time my heart broke, it would heal itself through some sort of long forgotten magic, but it would no longer be the same. It would beat less and less for her…

In a perfect world, we could give our heart to someone, and they’d cherish this gift enough to keep it safe. But this is a wicked, wicked world, and people always leave, and soulmates fall out of love, and nothing lasts forever, because forever is just a made-up word. And people always, and I mean always, will drop your heart to the ground. They’ll always drop it.

I became afraid that I’d never find my way to a paradise that would last for the rest of my life. My happily ever after. The ending that I have always felt the story of my life deserved.

When there was no her to wake up next to, it felt like hell. A strange hell, one that was so quiet, so desolate, so destitute, that it felt like being blind, numb, and deaf.

Sartre was wrong. Hell is never other people. Hell is loneliness. Hell is dreaming of her all night long, only to wake up all alone in the morning…

***

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]]>https://story-a-week.com/2018/05/14/paradise/feed/1mihaicristiandanielMake a Donation ButtonLucky Youhttps://story-a-week.com/2018/05/08/lucky-you/
https://story-a-week.com/2018/05/08/lucky-you/#commentsTue, 08 May 2018 05:08:07 +0000http://story-a-week.com/?p=57The odds of being born on any given day are about 0,27%. Of course, certain days are different than others, due to religious, cultural, or practical reasons. That’s why the odds of being born on Christmas Day are 0.0022%.

I was born on Christmas Day.

***

You ever hear the expression: “Karma’s a bitch?”

I know, I know. Such a terrible cliche. But it’s kind of true. I never met her, but I can tell you that “bitch” is the best possible definition of karma.

Fate. Destiny.

Fate fortunes the bold, the Romans would say.

It does. But she also screws them over, in ways no one could ever possibly imagine.

Like the ancient gods of Greece.

Like the way Zeus screwed mortal men and especially women for centuries.

You know, in that witty and cruel manner that makes you wonder if gods were ever on our side.

***

There’s this exam I haven’t had the time or energy to study for, so the teacher gets sick.

A friend is two months out on the rent, lost his job, his girlfriend dumped him. What happens? I whisper to him that he should try his luck at the lottery. He wins just enough to keep his head above water.

What would you do if you could have a bit of luck when you needed it the most? If you had the ability to simply… if you could manipulate fate in such a way as the outcome of an event favors you?

Some of you’d say this isn’t a power to be had by any mortal man, and you’d be right.

This isn’t the kind of thing you’d wish for in your life. The same way a judge feels the burden of having to differentiate right from wrong. Or a surgeon his ability to offer more life to the dying.

With great power comes…

There are checks and balances in this world. Ying and Yang. Black and white.

Newton’s third law states that for every action in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Fortune favors the bold. And then screws up their lives.

A week after the teacher gets sick, I catch a nasty flu. Fever and all that.

A couple days after my friend won the lottery, I lost my phone.

Karma’s a bitch, so I have to be careful how I use it to my advantage.

I have to calculate the odds, for every good thing I attract in my life, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.

Told you karma’s a bitch.

Today is Ariel’s birthday. My present; a photo shoot. Yeah, I am one of those artsy types. What do they call them? Hipsters. And she’s quite beautiful. So we walk around the city, me taking as many pictures of her as I can.

You’d think it a bit creepy if I told you she’s not my girlfriend. Yet.

But if I were to tell you that her smile is better than any metaphor ever written by man, you’d understand me.

So, we aimlessly wander through the city. A few hundred of pictures later, she has her back against a wall. There’s this graffiti of some wings on it. Yeah, you got the idea: she looks like an angel.

God, I am really that cliche.

She’s say I am commercial.

I guess I am.

Nonetheless, the pictures are stunning. She is stunning.

Then we go for a cup of coffee, while she stares at the few hundred photographs I took of her.

I wish this day would never end. I wonder how much this would cost me if I truly wished it into existence. I wonder…

A few hours later, we walk out of the cafe, and it’s time to say good bye. Ariel thanks me for the wonderful day. She smiles. I feel my ears and cheeks burning, blood boiling inside my veins. She looks at me like no one ever did. Odds are, no one ever will.

We go our separate ways. That’s when I feel the urge to turn around and stare at her one more time. She’s crossing the street. A few yards away from her, a car. She doesn’t seem to notice it. I run as fast as I can, and I pray that I am fast enough to save her from disaster.

The thing is, I am not nearly fast enough.

If only…

These are the saddest words in all existence.

To me, at least.

Fortune had once smiled upon me. That’s what my grandmother used to tell me. I was born on Christmas Day, the same day as most of the gods of old and new. I was born to conquer the world, to achieve great things.

I am not fast enough, but I can will things into existence.

If only I could reach her in time and save her from disaster. If only I could push her out of harm’s way.

If only, if only…

And before I can blink, we’re both lying against the cold pavement. She stares me in the eyes, dumbfounded. She is breathing fast and brokenly like a fish out of water.

Ariel. Still more beautiful than any work of art man has ever imagined into existence.

And I know karma’s a bitch, and fortune favors the bold. Only for a little while.

Then she screws up with them in the most sadistic way possible.

For Newton’s third law states clearly: for every action in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction.

***

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]]>https://story-a-week.com/2018/05/08/lucky-you/feed/5tumblr_ojwkn0Kqgf1skkfpco1_500mihaicristiandanielMake a Donation ButtonLove at first sighthttps://story-a-week.com/2018/05/05/love-at-first-sight/
https://story-a-week.com/2018/05/05/love-at-first-sight/#commentsSat, 05 May 2018 13:21:17 +0000http://story-a-week.com/?p=109He enters the waiting room, sees all the other patients eagerly waiting to be called into the doctor’s office. They all nod in that peculiar manner; they are here because of necessity, rather than choice. He sits on the only available chair and takes out his cell phone. It’s so warm inside that he has to struggle not to yawn.

But then he looks up and sees her.

It’s always such a shock to see someone beautiful in places you wouldn’t expect to see anything of importance.

At first, he doesn’t give much thought into it. His eyes keep darting around the room, scanning the austere furniture and white walls. Waves of heat scratch their way out of his chest. He can feel it in his blood, he can feel his body hot as a furnace. He runs his tongue across his upper lip.

A certain photograph grabs his attention; a black and white photograph of a public phone’s handset hanging inside the booth. The more he stares at it the more it seems that the handset is oscillating, spiraling on its metallic chord. So he glances back at her.

His mind is drowning in a mesmerizing and ridiculous dream… in which the passage of time is irrelevant.

She doesn’t notice him, mostly because they’re sitting in opposite sides of the room. But this allows him to sink deeper in bizarre and quiet contemplation of her beauty. He has never seen features that are so finely chiseled, and lips that, quite honestly, are begging to be kissed. Furthermore, she has the strange custom of constantly liking them and that only makes his heart boil inside my chest.

Quite simply, he’s rather smitten with her. And he doesn’t even know her name. What for?

A burning exhaustion starts to burn inside his veins. His hands resting on his knees, he can feel them almost shaking.

All he wants to do is kiss her. To kiss her lips, to kiss her chocolate skin. Chocolate… that’s one of the few words on his mind right now. He’s almost sure her skin tastes like it too. He affords to smile at all these thoughts; he’s such a cliché.

People coming and going, people knocking at doors, people coughing, and he is afraid to look away, and he’s terrified to look at her. Honestly, he doesn’t know what to do. He feels as if he has met her before. Sometime, somewhere, maybe in an entirely different lifetime all together.

He wants to know her, to analyze every single inch of her body and every aspect of her personality. He wants to know her past, to know everything.

And the more he stares at her, the more he’s certain that he has always been in love with her. Even before she met her. He can’t explain this ridiculous thought. But it’s not a thought, a theory… it’s more like an instinct. Somewhere hidden, somewhere deep inside his soul, he feels it. She is the only woman he will ever love.

He is afraid that if he looks closely at her, if he inspects her, she will prove to be less than what he expects her to be. It’s like he’s holding a lottery ticket in his hand and he’s afraid to take a look at the winning numbers for fear that they’re not the numbers on his ticket.

He feels as if something extraordinary is about to happen. As a second stretches like a rubber band, unwilling to break, he feels as if they’re meant to be together. To be happy together, to grow old together, to wither away under the cruel waves of time. Together.

He likes everything about her. Her small, black eyes, her plucky lips, her curly hair. Maybe it’s just an illusion, a bizarre mirage, but he can swear he can smell her perfume.

No, this is not right. Falling in love with a stranger is dangerous. Hell, falling in love is dangerous. He has no time for silly games of courtship. He has plans, he’s busy. Besides, what is he supposed to say to her? How can he make her see that he’s the man she is looking for?

“Excuse me, miss but I am… well I don’t have a terrible disease or anything. I just tend to cough a lot when it’s cold outside and it’s really hard to breathe. But I am sure there are some pills that will fix me in no time.”

What if she isn’t looking for a man? What if she already found one? Her one and only?

No, no. He has to find something, he has to tell her something great, original, funny. The very best pickup line ever invented.

But what if her one and only is a woman?

“So how are you feeling today, Lisa?” the nurse asks and places one hand on her shoulder.

“Fine,” she whispers, her voice warm and lovely.

Lisa. A little bit of her mysterious charm has been unveiled.

But why does the nurse know her by her first name? They seem to know each other quite well. Does she have a terrible disease?

“What’s your birthday? I can’t seem to find your file anywhere,” the nurse says as she looks around the waiting room.

“June the twenty first,” she replies.

“What year?”

“1987.”

She is two years younger than him. Zodiac sign: Gemini. That means she isn’t a very passionate or affectionate woman. At least, that’s what astrologists say.

A shame actually. To have lips like hers…

When she goes inside the doctor’s office, he knows he has to think of something to say to her. He’s next in line, she’s going to come out of the office, and he’s…

He’s a man of words. At least, that’s what he likes to believe. He’s thinking of all the books he has read, all the stories he has written. All the movies, the love songs… he wants to tell her something no other man has ever thought of telling a woman.

A single sentence that would turn indifference into love, a few words stringed together that would make her feel what he feels.

All this thinking makes him feel dizzy, as if he’s sinking in a dream. Inside his head, he’s already built the perfect stranger, and he’s absolutely certain this stranger’s the only one who’s going to help him build the perfect world. He looks around, but is certain that if he would press one finger against the wall behind him, his finger would go right through, as if the wall were made of butter.

Reality is far away.

Only his dream matters. And the words he needs to say.

Something brilliant, something no other man has had the courage or wit to say. Or the heart. Or the passion. He’s the only man who ever loved so deeply and foolishly.

When the door opens, he stands up quickly, but then freezes in front of her.